I thought I'd introduce myself. I've known about bitcoins for a while but finally decided to take a look and investigate it, especially after hearing that one of the vendors I've been to before (MemoryDealers) is now accepting them.

I'm a systems engineer for a small fruit company and have been in this field for waaaaaay too long. Married (woo!) with a couple of college aged step kids (woowoo!)

Set up a miner (poclbm) on my MacPro at home since it generally just sits bored.

Though I do have a question. I haven't tried it yet, but, when I set up multiple miners (different computers of course) do I just point them back to the system running bitcoind? For example, I typically have a few other machines around the house generally idling. I could use the spare cycles to run a few more miners when they're not doing anything.

But otherwise, I'd been reading this board for a few days and thought I'd finally speak up and say hello.

Hello.

Mel

PS: If anyone wants to send me a fraction of a btc to test out, I also wouldn't complain. I've yet to see anything generated, but then the miner has only been running for about 3 days.

You probably want to look into pooled mining (Mining -> Pools area) since you're never going to generate a bitcoin by yourself, especially without power gpus. You might want to watch your mac because I've seen a few threads saying their mac's hardware got damaged from prolonged mining with the mobile gpu.

Keep in mind that mining with CPU's is pretty wasteful because the power required to run those computers don't come close to the amount of bitcoins you will receive. Most of us are running systems with multiple graphics cards that have high hashing power (the most popular being the 5830 which can do about 275mh/s depending on clock settings).

But is mining really profitable anyway? I mean, doesn't it take well more cost in energy to produce them than to buy them? And I don't see the point, unless you're planning to churn out loads, and hold them til' the value per BTC is like sky-high!So I don't see the point, and don't forget that guy who was in hospital with heatstroke because he left three souped-up machines on in his bedroom and it was hot weather too..he reckons he has got brain-damage Not good...

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But is mining really profitable anyway? I mean, doesn't it take well more cost in energy to produce them than to buy them? And I don't see the point, unless you're planning to churn out loads, and hold them til' the value per BTC is like sky-high!So I don't see the point, and don't forget that guy who was in hospital with heatstroke because he left three souped-up machines on in his bedroom and it was hot weather too..he reckons he has got brain-damage Not good...

If you already have a good system and take the time to master pools the benefits still outweigh the energy costs. If you expect the price of BTC to continue rising over time then it would be a very good idea to gather it while it's still lower (and rewards are more plentiful).

But is mining really profitable anyway? I mean, doesn't it take well more cost in energy to produce them than to buy them? And I don't see the point, unless you're planning to churn out loads, and hold them til' the value per BTC is like sky-high!So I don't see the point, and don't forget that guy who was in hospital with heatstroke because he left three souped-up machines on in his bedroom and it was hot weather too..he reckons he has got brain-damage Not good...

The electricity costs are only about 10% of the cost right now. It is unprofitable because of the equipment costs coupled with how quickly the difficulty is growing (doubling every 18 days)

But is mining really profitable anyway? I mean, doesn't it take well more cost in energy to produce them than to buy them? And I don't see the point, unless you're planning to churn out loads, and hold them til' the value per BTC is like sky-high!So I don't see the point, and don't forget that guy who was in hospital with heatstroke because he left three souped-up machines on in his bedroom and it was hot weather too..he reckons he has got brain-damage Not good...